Back in 1988, Henry, Mark and Shirley Symons opened up their Pick-Your-Own business on the working farm which has been farmed by the Symons family since 1850. Today, visitors to Trevathan Farm will still find a wide choice of soft fruits and vegetables to pick but also a well stocked farm shop, an outstanding tearoom, a pet’s corner and a children’s play area.

This inviting complex stands on the hillside, on the edge of St Endellion village, commanding panoramic views over the valley to St Austell. Customers can enjoy this stunning vista from the tearoom and its elegant spacious conservatory. The menu offers a wide choice of excellent home made food and, naturally, includes a scrumptious Cornish Cream Tea, served with home made scones, strawberry jam and lashings of Cornish clotted cream.

There’s something here for every taste, - hot meals and freshly made sandwiches, jacket potatoes and home made pizzas, salads and ploughman’s lunches. A hearty breakfast is served until 11.30am, beer and wine is available with main meals, and children have their own specials, to be followed perhaps by one of the tasty Supershakes made with ice cream.

Children are also well-provided for in the outside play area close to the Pets Corner with its playful Angora goats and chubby pot-bellied pigs.

If you don’t want to pick your own fruit or vegetables, you’ll find a good selection on sale in the farm shop which also stocks its own jams, chutneys, pickled beetroot and much more. There are wines from Lyme Bay, Scrumpy from Truro, Camel Valley grape wines, as well as Cornish Rebellion bitter from Redruth.

Cheese lovers are spoilt for choice with a selection of local cheeses such as Cornish Yarg with its covering prepared from stinging nettles. Other tempting products include home produced free-range eggs, locally baked bread, organic wild boar and venison. Amongst the non-edible items are quality photographic cards of Cornish scenes, pottery, and paintings by the well-known local artist John Hewitt.

Opening times: Easter to end of October: 10.00am - 6.00pm (daily).

Tel: (01208) 880164.

No one yet has come up with a convincing explanation of how Mousehole acquired its unusual name. Local people who know it as ‘Mouzel’ suggest that this lovely little fishing-port was given such a strange name because the harbour was one of the most difficult to find on Cornwall’s storm-ravaged seaboard. Its history stretches back for more than 2,500 years when the Phoenicians were trading here but, with the exception of the Keigwin Arms Inn, every building you see was erected after 1595.

In that year, a small force of Spanish warships tried to avenge the defeat of the Armada seven years earlier by attacking and razing to the ground the undefended and unarmed towns of Penzance, Newlyn and Mousehole. Only Squire Keigwin made a successful stand for his mansion but was killed in the fighting.

The coast-line near Mousehole is a maze of sharp-toothed rocks, narrow inlets, dead-end coves and secret valleys. Perfect territory for the smugglers of the 18th century to land their illegal cargoes of French brandy and Spanish sherry. If they were caught (not very likely), the jury (most of them their local mates) rarely found them guilty.

At one time it was estimated that more than a third of the spirits consumed in England had been illicitly imported. Sailors found it infinitely more profitable than the other mainstay of the Cornish economy - fishing for pilchards. Millions of these plump, oily, easily-caught fish swarmed around the coast from August to October.

The whole village turned out to off load the catch and take it to the pilchard press nearby. here the oil was extracted, the flesh salted and crammed into barrels. The industry declined after the First World War and the pilchard press closed some time in the 1920s but five years ago Penny Harvey arrived here.

A cheerful, lively hostess, Penny has converted the old building with its 2ft. thick walls into a delightful tea-room offering an inviting range of home-made cakes, pies, soups and light meals. At the dark wood tables with their vases of fresh flowers you’ll be served a choice of good quality teas or coffee, Cream Teas of course, enormous tea-cakes, pavlovas, speciality ice creams and generous slices of Penny’s marvelous cakes, carrot cake or coffee and walnut perhaps.

Light meals are available throughout the day (jacket potatoes, pastries, ploughman’s, sandwiches), and each day a ‘special’ dish, Fisherman’s Pie or Lasagne maybe.

Curiously, one thing you won’t find on the menu is a pilchard!

Opening times: 10.30 am to 5.00 pm (March to November). In July and August, opens until 9.00pm, Christmas and New year, 11.00am to 6.00 pm or later.